as you know, the key to being secretary of defense, and cheney, when he was secretary of defense, or bob gates, for both bush and obama, to put it in english, you have to be a ball buster. chuck hagel yesterday was the opposite, just unsure of himself on the question of the surge which mccain was pounding him on. mccain has a very strong position, but there is a respectable position to say, wait a minute. the surge wasn't the big magic wand that lots of people think it was. i wrote a whole book about it, "the war within," showing that it was top-secret operations. if you can remember the sunni awakening in iraq in 2006, 2007, contributed to the reduction of violence. what was surprising is that hagel didn't have the defense for that very respectable position. >> well, you know, and chuck todd, donny deutsch and i have been talking about it this morning. he just seemed ill prepared. i don't think it's going to change any votes at the end of the day. i think he still passes. but chuck hagel knew, and his handlers knew he had made some very dumb comments in the past, some ill-advised co